Sutton Place, Surrey

Sutton Place, 3 miles north-east[n 1] of Guildford in Surrey, is a Grade I listedTudormanor house built c. 1525[1] by Sir Richard Weston (d. 1541), courtier of Henry VIII. It is of great importance to art history in showing some of the earliest traces of Italianate renaissance design elements in English architecture. In modern times, the estate has had a series of wealthy owners, a trend started by J. Paul Getty, then the world's richest private citizen,[2] who spent the last 17 years of his life there. Its current owner is the Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov. A definitive history of the house and manor, first published in 1893, was written by Frederic Harrison (d. 1923), jurist and historian, whose father had acquired the lease in 1874.

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The building, with its perpendicular forms overlaid with Italian ornament, bears little resemblance to any other courtier's house of the 1520s, and it ranks with the vanished Nonsuch Palace as a landmark in the introduction of renaissance ideas"[3]

Harrison (1899) stated it to be "a landmark in the history of art",[4] and "a cinquecento conception in an English gothic frame".[5] He identified it as "one of the first houses built as a peaceful residence, with no thought for defence...one of the first country houses in the modern sense, instead of an imitation castle...Weston perceived that the Wars of the Barons were over, that a gentleman might live at his ease under protection of law and the king's peace".[6] Weston was certainly daring in his choice of eye-catching decoration above his front-door, for which he surely risked being ridiculed by his manly friends, including the king himself: innocent loving children at play: the amorini. Was this a signal by an avant-gard Sir Richard to his visitors, many of whom must have been valiant and experienced soldiers, that his house was to be a haven where love and play were de rigueur, not the old-fashioned militaristic conversations and behaviours? What a different message this was to that placed above the gates of Dante's Inferno: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here". At Sutton, the defensive towers and turrets of the old castles and fortified manors have been reduced to mere pilasters, covered with decorative terracotta, cariacatures of their former selves, perhaps as symbols of a deliberate rejection of defensive elements by Weston. The symbolism of the short stretch of crenellated parapet on the roofline above the front-door, one of the most potent aspects of the old defensive fortress, has been disarmed and cancelled-out by the almost jarring sight of a covering of yet more playful amorini. A more deliberately dissonant juxtaposition would be hard to imagine, yet that is what Sir Richard ordered to be erected. Sutton is clearly a house with a message to proclaim, which would not have been, could not have been, missed by its visitors.

Original north wing containing gatehouse, demolished 1782, drawing made in 1779

The house is built of red brick and was originally of four blocks enclosing a quadrangle exactly 81 ft. 3 ins. square.[7] The northern block or wing was demolished in 1782, giving the house its present open appearance of a U-shape, the two surviving flanking wings forming a courtyard looking to the east. An unusual feature is that, due to the extreme flatness of the site, the entire ground floor of the whole house stands on the exact level of the soil, so that no step exists for entering the house on any side.[8] It is set within a separately listed formal parkland at the end of a long driveway.[9]

The decorative elements made from moulded terracotta on the facade are renaissance italianate. They consist of designs made from 40-50 different moulds,[10] most strikingly comprising a panel of two rows of amorini immediately above the entrance door. Such Italianate influence had never before been seen in English architecture, and is thought to have resulted from designs seen by Weston during his travels on embassies to France, where he might have seen some of the newly built chateaux on the Loire. With very minor exceptions, no stone was used in the building and decoration of Sutton Place, only brick and terracotta.[11] Thus, the bases, doorways, windows, string-courses, labels and other dripstones, parapet, angles, cornices, and finials are all of moulded clay.[10] Such usage is only found in two other contemporary English buildings, East Barsham Manor in Norfolk and Layer Marney Tower in Essex. Its use was, however, rapidly abandoned in England, to appear again only in the Victorian era. The terracotta proved very hard-wearing and was described by Harrison in 1899 as "sharp and perfect" in condition.[10] The terracotta has, however, undergone, in the 1980s, a £12 million refurbishment, involving much replacement, by the specialist firm Hathernware Ceramics Ltd, which used 18 different colour blends of clay to match the original variety of shades.[12] Prior to that, it seems the only new elements were from 1875 when 10 new terracotta mullions and window-frames made by Messrs Blashfield of Stamford, from moulds of existing windows, replaced sash-windows inserted in the 18th century. Two completely new small windows were, at the same time, created from terracotta in the gables of the quadrangle.[13]

Monogram of Sir Richard Weston, moulded terracotta

Rebus of Weston, a "waisted-tun", a barrel with concave ends. Terracotta moulding at Sutton Place

Other terracotta decorative elements include framed monograms of "R W", the builder, and reliefs of his rebus of the concave-ended barrel, probably signifying a "waisted-tun". The "tun" was a play on the last syllable of Weston. The concave-ended barrel is sometimes shown between two goose heads, the significance of which is unclear, unless it be the French word Oie plus -"tun". Willam Bolton (d.1532), prior of St Bartholomew's in Smithfield, is also known to have used the rebus of a "tun", as can be seen in his surviving oriel window within the church in the form of a barrel with a bolt of a crossbow passing through vertically. Another recurring terracotta element is a double bunch of grapes, thought by some to represent hops. Harrison believes the story of Weston having been "the King's brewer" unfounded and "a vulgar story".[10] Similar hop-like bunches of grapes also feature at Layer Marney, and there is no evidence of Lord Marney, captain of the royal bodyguard, having been similarly a brewer.

The hall windows contain fine painted glass, much installed contemporaneously with the building of the house. These consist of shields of arms and other rebuses. There are, in total, 14 windows containing 92 separate lights, each containing a shield or quarry of painted glass. They are of different dates and quality, belonging to three separate epochs, but mostly relating to the builder's family. Some glass predates the house and is believed to have come from the earlier manor house of Sutton. Harrison states certain to be "of extraordinary beauty and rarity"..."of the finest painted glass of the time of Henry VIII".[14] Apart from family arms, the arms of King Richard III and emblems of the Roses, Red and White are also shown; all relate to the Battle of Bosworth at which Edmund Weston, Governor of Guernsey, father of Sir Richard, is thought to have assisted Henry Tudor by providing the use of money, ships or even a contingent of soldiers.[15]

Sutton Manor, within which the Tudor mansion is situated, appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Sudtone. It was held by Robert Malet. Its Domesday assets were: 3 hides; 1 mill worth 5s, 3 ploughs, 20 acres (81,000 m2) of meadow, woodland worth 25 hogs. It rendered £5. The previous manor house stood about a quarter of a mile from the present house, on the hill now occupied by St Edward's Chapel and Vine Cottage.[16]

Within Sutton Place was once the blood-stained ruff of St Thomas More and a crystal pomegranate that once belonged to Queen Catherine of Aragon. The pomegranate emblem of the Queen features as a decoration in several places within the house, which suggested to Harrison that Weston certainly built the house before she was divorced by Henry VIII in 1533, and possibly before 1527 when it would have been known by his courtiers, such as Weston, that the King had turned his affections away from Catherine towards Anne Boleyn.[17]

Sutton Place remained in the Weston family and families related to it by marriage until 1919, although let out for part of the time. The family was recusant from Tudor times, which precluded it from taking an active part in public life. Successive occupants thus lived as retiring country gentlemen of reduced means, which meant that the house escaped remodelling through the ages. A collection of portraits of the Weston, Webbe and Webbe-Weston family was sold at auction on 13 July 2005 by Sotheby's Olympia, London.[18]

Sir Richard III Weston (1591–1652), canal builder & pioneering agriculturalist. Son of Richard II. Last prominent member of Weston family in English public life.[21] In 1641 he sold Clandon Park and Temple Court Farm at Merrow to Sir Richard Onslow, MP for Surrey in the Long Parliament and ancestor of the Earl Onslow.[22]

John I Weston (d.1690), 2nd and eldest surviving son of Richard III, his eldest brother Richard IV having died young. Married in 1637.[23] Mary Copley da. & heiress of William Copley of Gatton, Reigate, Surrey.[24] He sold Gatton in 1654 and Sutton Place once again became the Weston's principal residence.[25] He constructed a new quadrangle on the side of the east wing of Sutton Place, as service quarters, and generally refitted-out the house.

John II Weston (d.1730), only son of Richard V, and last heir male of the blood of the founder.[26] He married Elizabeth Gage (d.1724), sister of Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage (d.1754). He refitted the upper part of the east wing which had been dilapidated since a fire in 1561, creating a long gallery. His wife Elizabeth was, in Harrison's estimation,[27] the subject of Alexander Pope's "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady", published in 1717. Harrison derives his opinion from a note of Pope's appended to his letter to Mrs Weston, and states the story of the poem, involving a suicide, to be pure imagination.

Melior Mary Weston (1703–1782), spinster, last of the Weston name. A portrait exists of her in 1723 aged 20. She bequeathed all her estates to John Webbe, a very distant cousin, on condition that he adopted the name and arms of Weston.[28] John Webbe-Weston erected a marble tablet to her memory in Holy Trinity Church, Guildford where she was buried in the Weston Chapel built by Sir Richard Weston the founder, inscribed as follows:[29]

"To the Memory of Melior Mary Weston of Sutton Place in the county of Surrey, Spinster. This Marble was erected as a tribute of sincere respect and gratitude by John Webbe Weston of Sarnesfield Court in the county of Hereford, Esq. who in pursuance of her last will and bequest succeeded to her name and estates. She was the last immediate descendant of an illustrious Family which flourished in this county for many successive generations, and with the ample possessions of their ancestors inherited their superior understanding and distinguished virtues

obiit, 10 Junii, MDCCLXXXII, aet. 79. R.I.P."

John Webbe erected a tablet very similar to this one in Sarnesfield Church in 1795 to the memory of his other spinster distant cousin Ann Monington, a nun who had left her Hereford estates, including Sarnesfield, to him in 1780. Ann Monington's father Edward's second wife was Bridget Webbe and he died without any male heirs. John Webbe, to whom Ann Monington left the Sarnesfield Estate, was the son of Bridget Webbe's uncle Thomas Webbe of Hammersmith.[30]
It appears both bequests came to him due to his having adhered to the Roman Catholic religion, which other cousins in contention for the bequests had deserted, to the displeasure of the legators. John Webbe-Weston was the son of Thomas Webbe, a linen draper, of York Street, St Paul's, Covent Garden (in the 1740s) and of Brook Green, Hammersmith (in the 1770s) by Ann Tancred, daughter of Thomas Tancred, a woollen draper, of St Paul's, Covent Garden (in 1768) by Frances Gazaigne.[31] Thomas Tancred was the grandson of Sir William Tancred, 2nd Baronet (d.1703) of Aldeborough, Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, by Elizabeth Waldegrave, da. of Charles Waldegrave of Stanninghall, Norfolk, 2nd son of Sir Edward Waldegrave, 1st Baronet.[32] Thomas Webbe's mother was the sister of William Wolffe of St Giles-in-the-Field and Great Haseley, Oxon, who married Frances Weston, aunt of Melior Mary Weston. William Wolffe's mother was Anne Pincheon of Writtle, Essex, daughter of John Pincheon who was the son of Sir Edward Pincheon of Writtle by Dorothy Weston, sister of Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland, who shared a common descent with Richard Weston the founder of Sutton Place from a certain Humphrey Weston.[33]

John Webbe-Weston (d.1823), assumed by licence in 1782 the surname Webbe-Weston, but did not adopt old Weston arms. He was descended from the sister of William Wolffe, the husband of Frances, Melior's paternal aunt. The Wolffes of Great Haseley, Oxon., were descended from the Westons of Preston Hall, Essex. In 1782, the year he inherited Sutton Place, he demolished the dilapidated gatehouse wing[34] He completed renovations in 1784, having rejected proposals of the architect Bonomi to remodel the house in an Italianate or neo-classical style. In 1794 he inherited Sarnesfield Court, Hereford, (demolished in 1955) from his cousin Anne Monington. He married firstly Elizabeth Lawson (d.1791, aged 34) da. of Sir John Lawson of Brough Hall, Yorks.

John Joseph I Webbe-Weston (d.1840), son of John Webbe-Weston by Elizabeth Lawson. He married in 1811 Caroline Graham.

Capt. John Joseph II Webbe-Weston (d.1849), only son of John Joseph I. He died in action on the Danube. In 1847 he married Lady Horatia Waldegrave, da. of John Waldegrave, 6th Earl Waldegrave. On her 2nd marriage to John Wardlaw the Weston estates passed as a life interest to Thomas Monington Webbe-Weston (d.1857) her 1st husband's uncle.

Thomas Monington Webbe-Weston (d.1857), 2nd son of John Webbe-Weston, last of that name. He married Mary Wright and died without issue.

Arms of Salvin of Croxdale Hall, Durham: Argent, on a chief sable two mullets or[35]

Francis Henry Salvin (d.1904), of Croxdale Hall, Co. Durham. He was the residuary legatee of the will of Capt. John Joseph II Webbe-Weston. He was a grandson of John Webbe-Weston, his mother having been Anna Maria Webbe-Weston, who in 1800 married William Thomas Salvin of Croxdale, a member of a Catholic family prominent in Yorkshire and County Durham.[36] He lived at the relatively modest Whitmoor House in nearby Woking. He was an authority on falconry, and wrote, with William Brodrick, Falconry in the British Isles (1855). He kept pet otters and a pet pig named "Lady Susan" at his home in Woking and was something of a practical joker using his pig as an accomplice. He inherited Sutton Place in 1857, but not with free-possession as, in 1855, it was tenanted by Charles LeFevre, who was followed by a tenancy to Caledon Alexander.[37] In 1874, Salvin leased Sutton Place to the stockbroker Frederick I Harrison (d.1881), from whom it passed to his son Sidney Harrison. One of his younger sons was Frederic Harrison, the historian, who wrote the definitive history of Sutton Place. The Harrison family spent much care and money on preserving the house.[38] From 1900, the tenant was Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (d.1922)[39]

On the death of Francis Salvin in 1904, the estate passed to his niece's son Philip Witham, a solicitor, who died in 1921. Witham was born in 1842, 4th son of Sir Charles Witham Knt., a Captain in the Royal Navy, by Jane, daughter of John Hoy, of Stoke Priory. He was the grandson of William Witham and Dorothy Langdale. He was educated at Mount St Mary's and abroad and admitted a Solicitor in 1866. He became head of the firm of Messrs Witham, Roskell, Munster and Weld. He served as a member of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial Committee in 1904. He married, in 1878, Louisa Salvin, da. of Marmaduke Salvin of Burn Hall, Durham, and
niece of Captain Francis H. Salvin.[40] Witham had never held vacant possession of Sutton Place and sold it on the expiry of the Northcliffe tenancy in 1918. His wife Louise lived on until 1945. In July 1945, the voluminous Weston family estate papers were presented to Surrey Archives by Mrs D Wolseley of Guildford.[41]

The "Weston Chapel" stands attached to the south side of Holy Trinity Church, Guildford. Its external walls are of a decorative chequerboard pattern of flint and freestone squares. It was built c.1540 by Richard Weston (1465–1541) of nearby Sutton Place, primarily as his intended burial place, as his will, dated 15 May 1541,[42] directs that his body be:

"buryed in the P'yshe Churche of the Holy Trinitye with in the Town of Guldforde in a Chapell which I have caused to be made for the same iyntent" [43]

The Chantry established and funded by Weston is listed in the "Survey of Chantry Lands, Surrey" made between 1546 and 1548 as part of the administering of the Dissolution of the Monasteries as being:

"For the mayneteyninge of one priest and one yerely obite for the terme of xx ti (i.e.20) yeares begyninge the xx th day of June in the xxxii yere (1541) of the reigne of our late sovereign lorde Kinge Henry the eight. The incumbent whereof is Anthony Cawsey clerke of the age of l (i.e.50) yeres...which said chauntrey and obite are worth lands and tenements by the yere x li (i.e. £20) whereof to the pore xxvii s iiii d. (i.e. 27 shillings & 4 pence) and so remayneth clere viii li iiii d (i.e. £8 4d) plate parcel gilt viii oz di. Qrt. xlii s iii d Ornamentes x li."[43]

The Weston family maintained their Catholic faith throughout the Reformation and beyond, which was a great sacrifice for them as it prevented them from holding public office and brought much suspicion on them from government officials throughout the ages. The freehold of the Weston Chapel was retained by descendants of the Weston family until 2005, when the trustees of the Weston Estate granted it to the main Protestant Church of Holy Trinity, to which it has been physically attached since 1763. Part of the arrangement was that a Catholic mass be held in the Chapel at least annually. There are three surviving Weston monuments in the chapel. Two are wall tablets, the earliest of which commemorates Melior Mary Weston (d.1782) of Sutton Place, the last direct descendant of the founder and only child and sole heiress of John II Weston (d.1730) and Elizabeth Gage, sister of Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage. The tablet was erected by her grateful distant Catholic cousin John Webbe-Weston (d.1823) to whom she bequeathed all her estates, including Sutton Place. The other tablet is for Elizabeth Lawson, who died in 1791, aged 34, first wife of John Webbe-Weston.[44] The other Weston Monument, which once stood in the centre of the Weston Chapel but now stands in the west porch of the main church, is the chest tomb of Anne Pickering (d.1582), wife of Sir Francis Weston the only son of the founder who was executed in 1536, aged only 25, for supposed adultery with Queen Anne Boleyn. Although she remarried, she expressed the wish in her will to be buried near her first father-in-law.[45] Francis, having been beheaded in the Tower of London, was buried in an unmarked tomb within the precincts of the Tower. The effigy is of a recumbent woman wearing a ruff and lies on a chest tomb sculpted with skulls showing behind a grille.

J. Paul Getty, who purchased the estate in 1959, was then, or shortly thereafter, the world's richest private citizen. His choice of Sutton Place for his principal residence made the property well known. He adopted a very low personal profile locally, being occasionally seen by Sutton Green villagers driving through in a very old model Cadillac coupé. For the 2017 film All the Money in the World, about the kidnapping of Getty's grandson John Paul Getty III, scenes set at Sutton Place were filmed at Hatfield House.

Stanley J. Seeger. Sutton Place was sold in 1980, after Getty's death in 1976, by his Getty Oil Corporation, for £8 million, to a company owned by Stanley J. Seeger who established the Sutton Place Heritage Trust to maintain the property. He was an American heir to a family fortune from lumber, petroleum, and other sources, who had begun collecting art whilst a student at Princeton University.[46] He was a patron of arts and educational charities and endowed a chair of Hellenic studies at Princeton University. He is never known to have given an interview. He redecorated Sutton Place and hung some of his modern paintings there including a Bacon triptych. In the early 1980s he commissioned landscape architect Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe to relandscape the park and gardens. Although Seeger stated he spent almost £1m a year on maintaining the house, he rarely lived there.[47]

Frederick R. Koch. After 10 years, Seeger sold it to another American art collector, Frederick R. Koch, who set up the Sutton Place Foundation, and in his turn redecorated the house and used it to display his own art collection to the public. According to The Guardian he is said never to have spent a night under its roof and to have sold it for £32m in 1999.[47] In January 2003, it was offered for sale at £25m.[48] The estate at that time comprised 21 properties, including the 18-bedroom Lady Grove Farmhouse.[49]

Alisher Usmanov, a Russian businessman, is the present owner.[50] Some of the properties with part of the estate land have now been sold. Lady Grove Farmhouse has been redeveloped into luxury housing. The interiors of Sutton Place House underwent extensive renovation and improvements for its new owner from 2007 to 2009.[51]

The lives of various owners of Sutton Place through the centuries were fictionalized in the Sutton Place Trilogy by Dinah Lampitt (aka Deryn Lake), comprising the novels Sutton Place (1983), about Richard Weston and his family, The Silver Swan (1984), about Melior Mary Weston, and Fortune's Soldier (1985), about Captain John Joseph Webbe Weston and Lady Horatia Waldegrave.

^Weston archives; Payne, John Orlebar (ed.), Records of the English Catholics of 1715, Compiled Wholly from Original Documents, London, 1889, p. 79, gives the following summary of the will of Charles Tancred: "WEST RIDING OF YORK: CHARLES TANCRED, of St. Paul s, Covent Garden, in his will of loth May, 1725, proved 28th November, 1733, names his son Thomas, then married, and his two das. Mary and Ann. The will of Frances Tancred, of St. Paul s, Covent Garden, widow of Thomas T. aforesaid, dated 26th March, 1748, was proved 2Oth March, 1753. She names her sister Mary, wife of Thomas Fraser, apothecary, and Ann F., their daughter ; her three das. Eliz. Tancred of Liege ; Ann, wife of Thomas Webb ; and Henrietta, wife of Robert Kirby ; leaving her " business of a woollen draper " to her sons-in-law, " both of St. Paul s, Covent Garden, Esquires," in trust for her eldest son John, second son Walter, and da. Barbara T.[2]